Ridiculous Opinions #258
Every person from an older generation looks down on younger generations. This opinion usually doesn’t stem from disdain, but more from pity. Now, whether that pity is justified or not is entirely up for debate, and I could certainly talk about how many things from when I grew up were absolute crap, but what I want to talk about today is something that I really feel like this current generation is missing out on. That subject?
Anticipation.
Anticipation is an esoteric subject for an essay/newsletter, but I’d like for you to bear with me for a minute while I sit back and try to extol the virtues of having to wait for something. Let’s go back to the late 1970s/early 1980s, where young Randall P. Girdner was a mere lad in Oklahoma…
There wasn’t a lot of entertainment in my hometown when I was growing up. We were lucky to have cable tv, which helped me to pass the time when I was bored. I spent a lot of time with MTV. But when it came to entertainment, aside from me just imagining things as I played with my toys, there wasn’t a lot available for me to occupy my brain or see that there was a world out there that was larger than my hometown.
But there was one thing that enabled me to expand my mind, and that was comic books.
My mother was a kind and generous soul. Things weren’t always so great at home, so she tried to distract me from some of the bad by showing me some of the good. This meant that whenever we would stop by a convenience store for gas, she would allow me to run into the store to peruse the spinner rack that contained all of the comic books.
The spinner rack was like a wormhole into other universes. Each rack had stacks of books, all crammed into them, that each had covers that just absolutely filled my little brain with all of the wonders that one could possibly imagine. Each cover was a mystery box that led you further into the unknown. What in the world was happening here?
What was happening with Batman and The Beatles?
Good lord, is that really going to be the fate of my favorite super-hero?
You can see how a seven-year old might find all of this intriguing.
And the best part of this was that these comics were cheap. It wasn’t asking a lot for my mom to shell out 15¢ for a Superman book. Sure, it was the 70s and inflation means that that 15¢ was was worth more then than it is now. But it still wasn’t a lot. And what she was doing was buying an afternoon of joy and entertainment for her son.
And the best part of all of this was that every convenience store had different books. These weren’t sophisticated operations. It was some teenager working behind the counter, putting the books into the spinner rack or on the shelves, without a care in the world in regard to what it meant. Sometimes comics would sit on the racks for months. Sometimes they would disappear as quickly as they arrived. It was a bit of gambling as to what you would find.
But the anticipation of what I may or may not find was what made me so happy. Every time I went to a new convenience store, I would discover a treasury of wonders, all of them new; all of them different.
Sometimes, when we went to a new town, I would force my mom (by gunpoint, of course) to stop at the Quiktrip or Love’s to let me go look, and because she was a softy, she would usually end up buying me something. (This was also a good thing, because it meant I could sit in the backseat of the car for extended periods of time, reading instead of complaining).
As I got older, this feeling evolved. The comics became more regular in their appearance, and because I was smarter, I knew that the stories continued on a monthly basis. When there was a cliffhanger ending in one comic, I only had to wait a month for that comic to reappear on the shelves, with a new and exciting cover and a continuation of the soap opera that was X-Men.
And therein lies the joy of what was happening. It wasn’t like today. Today, we have everything we want at our fingertips. TV shows come out in bursts. They’re not parceled out, week to week. All of the music in the world is available in a split-second, no matter where you are, instead of being a small mystery, where certain songs can only be acquired through diligent research or nefarious means. We know what is happening in our movies before they even happen because of social media. The anticipation has vanished and it makes our entertainment less fulfilling because of it.
When there was a cliffhanger in a comic, I had to wait a whole month before the next installment. It built anticipation. It made me crave what was next. It was a mystery that needed to be solved. And oh, how I hated waiting.
But the waiting is what made it special.
Having to wait for something to happen fueled my imagination and made me excited for what was coming next. And it didn’t end. Those comic series were forever. There was always going to be another X-Men comic. There was always going to be a new Superman comic. Some were good. Some were bad. But there was always the hope that a new mystery would unfold before us. And I couldn’t wait!
Today, comics cost almost $5 per issue. You can only buy them in an ever-dwindling number of specialty shops. Spoilers for stories are leaked months before the books actually come out. And worst of all, those comics are no longer made for kids. There is no gateway for children to get into these fantastical worlds that fuel their imaginations. Kids don’t fill in the blanks anymore. Everything is spelled out for them.
To me, that’s disappointing, and it makes me think that maybe some things were better when I was growing up. What seemed like an infinite wait to young Randy, as I anticipated the next issue of The Fantastic Four, was actually a way to build character.
Sure, this may sound like the ramblings of an old Gen X person, but I believe it. What I also believe is that those things that existed back then are being craved for now. I think that people are craving physical, tangible things to collect and make them feel human. And I think those things are coming back. I have theories as to why, because there’s a great sea-change coming that most people don’t even realize is there.
But that’s a newsletter for another day…See you next issue!
